


Second Chance

by iArgent



Series: Dimilix Week 2020 [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Children, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Claude arrives and gets adopted, Could be read as rodrigue/lambert if you want idk, Glenn doesn't exist in the future, Growing Up, It's angsty a lil, It's reincarnation so everyone died, It's weird! I admit!, Lambert being a good dad, Like...Spiritual Possession reincarnation leading to vaguely reasonable reincarnation, Lost History of Fodlan, M/M, Mental Illness, Mostly ancient felix not doing so hot sometimes, PTSD is touched on, Rated literally for Felix and Sylvain cursing and me not knowing if that's T or not, Rodrigue being a good dad, Sylvain may as well just be rodrigues second kid, Tears, Verdant Wind Route Characters, anyway, but they're back, dimilix week 2020, eventually, happy AF ending, he just calls him that, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:00:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22740628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iArgent/pseuds/iArgent
Summary: Dimitri dies at Gronder, Felix dies alone a few years later, sending his sword to Gautier territory as a symbol.A thousand years later they wake in new bodies, sort of, unable to settle. And the forgotten history of Fodlan is drawn into the limelight with the discovery of Edelgard's journal.In which Rodrigue and Lambert have semi-possessed children and a lot of stress.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Sylvain Jose Gautier/Claude von Riegan
Series: Dimilix Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634416
Comments: 21
Kudos: 118





	Second Chance

**Author's Note:**

> Hey I'm aware this is weird but have fun?
> 
> For context at the end.
> 
> Felix becomes an artist, it takes a lot of practice and it lets him focus.  
> Sylvain inherits his families business and Claude helps him run it.  
> Dimitri is almost definitely an equestrian and breeds horses for competition and trains them. 
> 
> Reincarnation in this fic is basically and best stated as a spirit waiting for a good time to be reborn, but not meshing fully with their new body, resulting in the "first" soul, the one being reincarnated, trying to bind with the new soul and body to become new again, not managing it fully, and sort of sharing a meat suit until the first soul is able to solve its unfinished business. In this case, Felix reuniting with Dimitri, and Sylvain seeing his best friend safe and happy and as he was meant to be. Claudes is Finally kissing Sylvain. At which point they remember their past vaguely, but move forward as they were meant to in the correct time period.
> 
> Sorry if that's confusing as fuck!
> 
> For day 2 of Dimilix week, again, I liked the prompts so that's.... Reincarnation, children, and tears.

Against all odds, Felix is Felix and Dimitri is Dimitri, and their fathers are best friends.

“I fought and I fought and I gave him three armies so he could rest.” A five year old Felix says before he even meets Dimitri. Rodrigue confused and concerned puts off Felix meeting his friends son, decides against telling him the other boys name until he stops saying absolutely hair raising things.

“I thought he was dead and I was so sad, daddy, then he was alive and it made me stronger!”

“That’s a good thing, Fe-”

“Then he fell and the soldiers killed him. Hilda said so and she was crying and Claude cried too.”

Rodrigue made an appointment with a child therapist. His son had never so much as heard the name Hilda, and this bizarre story only got darker and more fantastical. But Felix believed it, every word.

The therapist asks him when Felix picked up such an interest in history when he sketches out a perfect image of Emperor Edelgard von Hresvelg in under three minutes.

She makes a confused note when the boy frowns at the, frankly impressive, picture and says “She said I was a vanguard of the Goddess, and I killed her.” 

“Where is he getting this?” Rodrigue asks, near wits end “It’ll be a quiet day and suddenly he’ll say something that just….isn’t him.”

“Can you tell me how you notice?”

“Sometimes he talks like he’s remembering or telling me a story. Yesterday he pitched a glass into the wall and screamed ‘We can’t keep fucking doing this we’re running out of food!’ he…He isn’t a violent boy. And he never swears! And that was certainly not his voice.”

The therapist nods and says she’s going to make a few calls, but in the meantime, would Rodrigue please take Felix to the hospital and have him checked for a crest?

A crest like the old stories.

Felix, as it happened, couldn’t have picked a better period in history to be vomiting horror stories from. Most of the records were lost. A few heroes records survived. Several scholars indicated that the Archbishop of the time had stricken names from everything they could. A diary here or there appeared, and nobody could be sure any of the names were real or coded as there was a brutal war happening at the time. Edelgard had spread her image and notes far and wide, her manifesto. She was unable to be erased. One of her journals surfaced and the small portion that survived spoke of von Riegan on a white wyvern leading an army of traitors, deserters, and his own people. Foreigners at his back, fighting under his banner.

The vitriol and sadness Edelgard had used had led to a resurgence of a manhunt almost forgotten for more information. A painting in a local museum was carefully de-framed, the back reading Ignatz Victor.

Felix, settled into Rodrigues side and watching the television smiles really brightly. Rodrigue thinks he likes the painting, until Felix cries as he says “He became a painter, daddy! He said he never could!”

And Goddess be damned if it doesn’t turn out that Felix has a major crest of Fraldarius. Rodrigue is a little surprised when a government official comes to their home to file papers that they actually found the lost noble family, likely descended through an uncle, as the man who would have been Duke had vanished into Fodlan after the war.

Rodrigue does research for weeks before renting a documentary, apparently he has to learn about a war that’s mostly known as the one time an enemy stormed Enbarr and executed the Emperor, and then…left.

There’s not a lot. A von Riegan took up arms against the empire, the Holy Kingdom fell, though they found signs of an army that really didn’t match that timeline. The army von Riegan led included Sreng and Almyra which was evidently the first time they’d fought as allies. Apparently later on, a man bearing a striking resemblance to von Riegan arrives on a white wyvern as king to save Fodlans Archbishop, so there’s that. But the officers are the real interest, von Riegans officers. And that sets the world on fire. Everyone everywhere is asking who von Riegan’s officers were, everybody losing their minds over an ancient war. They know that Ignatz Victor was an artist who fought in the war, an old Almyran kings journal stating so.

There’s a statue in old Leicester territory, facial features worn down of the Noble of the Red Rose and a Free Spirit who fought in the war, who’d established schools after.

The media latches onto a tale of a boogeyman that families have unknowingly been using for years. Half don’t know the story. One has a journal. It’s not the Meandering Swords. But a merchant who saw him once, a slim, shorter man with long hair, who fought like lightening and slaughtered scores of enemies wherever he went. He fought for common people, but even in the old journal he is depicted as wild and wounded, aloof.

Rodrigue asks who he was on a whim. Felix, now six, fixes him with a long, overly sharp look, and says in that tone he gets sometimes, the aggressive one “He died at Gronder and kept walking for everyone else.” He said in that older, unfamiliar voice.

Rodrigue meets Lambert for drinks after that one.

The church issues a statement. They open their archives. They have the names, but they didn’t want their lives to be colored by the war.

It’s recommended if there are any children having…historically accurate outbursts that they be brought in.

Felix has been doing well in school, but his instincts are to fight, not necessarily to learn, and Rodrigue reluctantly accepts that he’s going to have to home-school him when he breaks up a fight by kicking a bully in a throat sending him to urgent care.

Lambert…is having issues with Dimitri. His son is seven, and becoming too melancholy to rise from bed. When he can, he doesn’t sleep for days, he talks to dead people he doesn’t know. He acts like Lambert isn’t right there. He cries for people he hasn’t met in his sleep. Lambert has started jotting down names.

Glenn, Mother, Father, Dedue, Felix (Lambert has to take a break at that one) Sylvain, Ingrid, Ashe, and so many others.

Lambert delicately asks what happened to them one morning, when Dimitri growls like a beast. Some are dead, some are alive.

“Sylvain would have forgiven me.” He says, apropos of nothing one morning. “He was Felix’s best friend, he loved me, he would have tried. But Felix would have stepped over my body before he forgave me for what I became.” He’d paused. “I think Sylvain wouldn’t have forgiven me, actually. I hurt Felix, I heard him call out to me at Gronder, and I didn’t answer. Sylvain would have hated me for hurting him.” that voice so world weary, so much more mature, stilted.

“Did you kill Felix?” Lambert asks, mouth dry and hand itching for his phone because wow, Rodrigue had been going through this for two years and he hadn’t realized how horrifying it was.

“No!” Dimitri says, sounding horrified. “I said I’d kill him, he said he’d kill me, he said he hated me. He called me a boar.”

“He doesn’t sound very nice.”

“But we loved each other, really. He was mad because I wouldn’t stop being mad. Before Edelgard…”

“Before Edelgard?”

“Things were okay, we were laughing. Too much wine I think, we forgot how angry we both were, and he kissed me. I’d never been so happy, father.”

This was officially above his pay grade.

“I wonder, if I would have just thought about how happy I was instead of how angry she made me, if I wouldn’t have died at Gronder.”

Lambert calls Rodrigue.

Slowly, their sons fall apart and integrate and fall apart and integrate. Until they’re some mix of Dimitri who died at Gronder and Dimitri who is incredibly gifted at horseback riding. “It’s easier with both eyes!”

Whatever that meant.

Felix is….Angry hurt hostile Felix who can only be reigned in by a redhead he meets the next year. And sweet Felix who loves cuddles and art.

By this point it has been five years since Lambert and Rodrigue had wanted to introduce their kids and instead realized they were harboring reincarnations of ancient soldiers.

And then the church releases the history. There’s a lot to unpack.

The redhead who had become Felix’s best friend two years ago was Sylvain, once Sylvain Gautier, Margrave Gautier. Best friend to Claude von Riegans deadliest soldier, Felix Fraldarius, and the King of the Holy Kingdom, Dimitri Blaiddyd.

Rodrigues son would have gone down in history as a great beauty with a kill count high enough to make anybody tremble.

Lamberts son was described as a good and earnest man, destroyed by betrayal and hardship, and felled on the field at Gronder.

Both men are thankful, in a way, that they got to grow up without that. They can keep them hidden until it dies down.

The boys are twelve when they meet, still pinwheeling between personalities still, in Felix’s case, saying things so hardcore Rodrigue needs to leave the room for a moment and ask how this is his life. He was prepared for Felix to be anything, but forgive him for not expecting a legendary soldier with anger issues, the would be lover of a king, and a master of slam poetry. At the same time.

Dimitri is well medicated and even the other him that shares his small body is reacting well to it. His fits of melancholy are strong now that the psychotic anger is lessened. It’s why they’re meeting. Lambert was unprepared to raise a king, let alone a king wracked with survivors guilt from a series of battles a thousand years ago.

Sylvain is there, because of course he is. Rodrigue gives him a plate for dinner. Apparently his home situation isn’t much better this time around, and Rodrigue is positive that while their other sides may have been separated from being inseparable by duty and his sons penchant for extremely personalized brutality, this time around, he’s a sweet kid and both sides of Sylvain seem ready to kill for him. He’s talked to Ancient Sylvain, he’s talked to Ancient Felix, the wrong words and the wrong voice coming out like a possession rather than a reincarnation. The church assures him that’ll die down as their souls fully integrate.

“Face it, Fe, you can’t get away from us then, or now.”

Rodrigue jolts to his feet. The two ancients rarely talk to each other, simmering inside of their bodies and reacting, sure. Talking? No.

“Urgh, is that a come on? Whore, I’m like, five.”

Rodrigue experiences the odd sensation of wanting to have a drink with his son and his best friend a thousand years ago. They seem….fun. He’s so used to the horror he rarely gets this.

“Oh please I have standards.”

“You hit on Ingrid’s grandmother.”

“Okay, y’know what? Fuck you, she was gorgeous.”

Low pitched laughter, and Rodrigue uses the notepad on his phone to mark down Ingrid.

“Are you excited though? To see him again.”

“The Boar?”

“Felix, c’mon. You’ve been madly in love with him for….one thousand and thirty eight years now?”

“I died at thirty-eight?”

“That’s when your sword turned up.”

Rodrigue was taking notes and feeling like an investigative journalist only he realizes he’s definitely spying on his son. His life has been weird as hell for years, why stop now.

“Then I object, One thousand and thirty years. I didn’t love anybody at eight. Well, you, and…dammit.”

“Me, and Rodrigue, and Glenn and Ingrid aaaaand?”

“Dimitri.”

“Damn straight. Only not because-”

“Do not use jokes you learned in this time at me.”

Usually the personalities fade rapidly, this time they stick around.

“Think your dads gonna keep creeping or will he come in?”

A knock on the door saves Rodrigues dignity. Dimitri is growing like a weed, Lambert looks frazzled and they wordlessly lead the boy into kitchen. Rodrigue opens his mouth to introduce them and realizes in this way they already know each other and this Felix isn’t exactly his son.

“Felix?” Dimitri says breathlessly “Sylvain?” and his voice is so different.

Lambert expected them to run at each other, to hug or fight. What happens is Felix standing and prowling closer, and odd posture for a boy so young. Sylvain stands and his hands flutter uselessly. Then finally.

“Your Highness.” And Sylvain bows low, awkwardly.

“Boar.”

“I ah. It’s been a while.”

Sylvain laughs, Felix, Rodrigues Felix grins wide and for a moment Dimitri looks crushed before the boys sweet smile melts into a snarl.

“I missed you, you asshole.”

“I missed you too, Fe.”

And then Felix, Ancient Felix, is crying. Tears rolling down his face, hand held delicately over his mouth in a mannerism so strange Rodrigue can’t look away, he’s sure this man didn’t emote much, him crying was unusual.

“Aww, you look like when we were kids, do you remember Dimitri? He was such a crybaby.”

A sniff “Oh fuck you Sylvain.”

Dimitri doesn’t hesitate, he strides forward, cuffs Sylvain upside the head in a way that’s only a little awkward at their heights and scoops Felix into his arms.

And the pressure in the room vanishes.

The three grow, and grow, and grow.

Lambert and Rodrigue take them bowling. Felix goes back to school. The information he gains comes quietly from inside.

A church representative, a man named Seteth, with dark green hair and a charcoal suit comes to speak to them, and Lambert and Rodrigue have to give it to him, he seems genuinely happy they’re okay. He asks them questions, pats them all on the head.

“The proximity made their reincarnations messy, I believe.” He speaks in clipped tones. “Something must have happened to set their souls to rest. The ghosts of the past have passed on, they’ll recall their pasts in some fashion, but no more unwelcome visitors.”

At sixteen Dimitri and Felix have their first date. They go to prom.

At eighteen, they go to college, and as ever, Sylvain follows.

At twenty three, Dimitri and Felix get married.

A lot of people Rodrigue and Lambert have never seen turn up. But some of their voices are wrong, and they all seem to love each other dearly, Rodrigue and Lambert know these are the officers everybody had been wondering about for years. At the reception a handsome dark skinned man waltzes up to Felix’s best man and says “Long time no see, Red. Didn’t recognize you without the horse and lance and thirty women.”

“You…you’re Claude? I think I remember you?”

“I’m pretty memorable.”

“Sorry if you’re…looking for other me. He’s been integrated since I was twelve.”

“Worth a shot.”

Sylvain kisses him anyway, and Claude and Sylvain become another set of kids. Lambert and Rodrigue never went through Other Claude, but having the Ancient General who killed the Emperor hitting on his second son the Ancient Dark Knight, and the King and his Would Be Shield sitting three feet away bickering about what pet to get when they move into their new apartment (Dimitri wanted a cat, Felix wanted a dog, they both preferred the other, they’ll end up with both), at the dinner table is enough to convince them they’ never wanted that.

Lambert opens a beer with a hiss. The boys are home for the holidays, Felix is splattered in paint like he always is, and Dimitri looks lovestruck as he always is. Sylvain had struggled to take a business call while Claude made faces at him which was on brand. “Always sorta believed in reincarnation, y’know.”

“Well, obviously.” Rodrigue says, opening his own.

“Always thought it was…cleaner.”

“Oh what, didn’t expect them to be half ghost?”

I did not.” Lambert replies, lifting his can like he’s toasting.

Rodrigue laughs and does the same.

“Here’s to fully realized reincarnation, with fewer ghosts.”

Rodrigue takes a swig of his drink. “Here’s to our boys. Weird little monsters they were, and fine men they are now.”


End file.
